During the entire week of March 15-19, Waynesburg University’s PRSSA hosted the Give Me Five Membership Drive. Utilizing each weekday, the organization offered five reasons to join PRSSA in hopes to attract at least five new members to join by the end of the spring semester. 

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, organizations across campus have noticed a decrease in membership, PRSSA included. 

“Our recruitment and our membership are lower,” Adrian Barnhart, president of the Waynesburg University PRSSA said. “So, as part of our Advanced PR Strategies course, we’ve been working on this campaign called the Give Me Five Membership Drive to hopefully recruit some students into PRSSA.”

During the week, PRSSA members went into classrooms, set up tables across campus and made their presence known to teach other students what PRSSA is. 

“I hope that in addition to the five members or any new members that we get from this membership drive, that we are able to have a larger presence on campus and get our name out there more and hopefully people will be able to identify us and what we do,” Barnhart said.

Emma Herrle, public relations director for WU PRSSA, was part of the group that was heading the project for Advanced PR Strategies class. Herrle said that planning this event has been a semester-long project, and because the Waynesburg chapter of PRSSA has never hosted a large membership push before, they had to look into what other chapters were doing.

Every PRSSA member in the chapter had a t-shirt designed by the Waynesburg University Design Club. The back of the t-shirts had the five reasons to join PRSSA printed on them. The shirts were created so students around campus could recognize the faces of the PRSSA chapter. 

“[The five reasons are] launch your career, grow your network, work with friends, access scholarships and win awards,” Herrle said. “Those were the five big reasons that we found were valuable to our chapter.”

PRSSA also asked that students share photos on social media if they got to know someone from the chapter and learned about the five reasons to join PRSSA.

The theme of “fives” was derived from the fact that PRSSA is celebrating their fifth consecutive win of Chapter of the Year in the Pittsburgh region. 

PRSSA set up a table at the Food Truck Thursday event with a prize wheel. Students were given the opportunity to spin the wheel for a chance to win a $5 food voucher for the food trucks. Students could also speak with PRSSA members at the table about joining PRSSA.

Moving forward, PRSSA will be putting together a list of everyone they talked to at the drive and invite them to meetings and events to keep them interested in the chapter.